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Where were you when . . . ? It’s a question asked most frequently about presidential assassinations, terror attacks, major sports wins and — if you live in Toronto — major sports losses. But for some reason, the question is rarely asked about watershed moments in technology — specifically social media, which in the last 10 years has upended social life as we know it.

I was in Grade 11 when it suddenly dawned on me that Facebook had become a permanently creepy fixture in my life. It was 2005, approximately a year after the social networking site officially launched. I arrived at school on a Monday morning wearing the same tank top I wore to a birthday party the night before, when a not-so-nice girl in my homeroom class approached me and asked: “Didn’t you wear that shirt yesterday?” The odd thing was, this not-so-nice-girl was not at the party I attended the previous night.

So how did she know I had worn the same tank top two days in a row? She knew, she told me, because she saw photos of me at last night’s party on Facebook; photos I had no idea were taken for public consumption; photos I hadn’t even seen myself.

That day I realized social norms had irreparably changed: whether I liked it or not, I was now the subject and consumer of a community tabloid. Recycled outfits, break-ups, and betrayals were no longer merely talked about; they were a matter of public record, and the only way to disengage from Facebook’s community tabloid was to disengage from social life altogether — a highly unattractive option for almost anyone, especially a teenager.

A decade has passed since self-imposed surveillance via social media became the way of the world, and I suspect another watershed moment is upon us: one in which we begin to seriously question the merits of self-surveillance and the cult of “hyper-connectivity.” How else to explain the enormous popularity of a forthcoming Facebook feature that will enable users to see less of each other?

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The site’s proposed “Take a Break” feature, announced this month, will allow users to limit or eliminate altogether sightings of their exes on Facebook. And unlike the site’s delete feature, Take a Break will be private, which means your ex-boyfriend or ex-wife will never know you’ve asked Facebook to hide their presence from your newsfeed. The feature’s massive popularity may be proof that many have come to regard social media surveillance as a double-edged sword; when you want to see and be seen, it’s fantastic — but when you want nothing of the sort, it is acutely painful.

Proponents of the new feature have heralded “Take a Break” as revolutionary. Finally we can have our cyberstalking cake and eat it, too, we can peer into the lives of some while maintaining distance from others. But there is nothing revolutionary about losing touch with people you no longer see on a daily basis. In fact, it is unnatural, not to mention unprecedented, to keep tabs on and know a great deal about men and women who dumped you two years ago.

Take a Break isn’t revolutionary; it is actually a setback to a simpler time when it was easy to avoid exes or wear the same tank top two days in a row because our lives were not bound to a community digital tabloid. Nor were they bound to staring blankly at screens.

Facebook isn’t the only online feature offering a return to pre-social media normalcy. Earlier this year, a Berlin startup launched Offtime, an app that restricts users from accessing the Internet at certain times a day, in order to help them “unplug easily and find more balance between work and life and tech usage.” If users want, they can even give the app permission to deny their requests to override its system — so that they are forced to spend time away from their phones, even if they change their minds and decide they want to reconnect.

These new features are a big deal and a great omen for the return of eye contact with loved ones at the dinner table and appropriate closure in failed relationships (as opposed to prolonged Facebook stalking and sulking.) They are proof we are beginning to question the merits of hyper-connectivity. Unfortunately, though, they are also proof that we are incapable of disconnecting on our own. Will power: there’s an app for that, too.

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